Re: Let's get controversial about Barry Fell

Eric Stevens wrote:
>
On Sun, 17 Jun 2007 18:11:05 GMT, David B <tronospamchos@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Carl wrote:
>>>
I have not the slightest doubt, after studying the book "America
BC", that
Barry Fell was sincere about his work with the so-called pre-
Columbian
inscriptions.
>>
I don't think anybody greatly doubts Barry's sincerity, but what's now needed to protect his academic legacy is somebody else who really understands why, for example, he chose to interpret that picture of an oared boat as Ogam, and can defend that interpretation with as much rigour as he would.

'rigour' or 'vigour'?

vigour is useless without rigour- which rather brings us to your next point...

In all fairness, Barry saw patterns that nobody else could see, even
when he explained the patterns to them. In some cases he seemed to be
doing the equivalent of reading messages from God in the wall paper
but in other cases he may have been right. Who really knows? I don't.

That's a bit like a stopped clock being exactly right more often than a slow or fast one. Some might prefer to see it as analogous to Clarke's Third Law- any sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from kookery- but what other examples do we have of discoveries which nobody at all could understand, even when they were carefully explained by the discoverer over a period of years?

David B.
.

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